Free Getting Old Is Criminal by Rita Lakin Page A

making quilts for underprivileged children. The colors are bright and the patterns cheerful. This was Ida’s idea.
    Someone pulls a chair over for me, and one of the members who had come in to the meeting directly from swimming offers me her towels to dry myself.
    Sophie informs me that they were in the middle of an important discussion. Doctors. “Of course, I was bragging about my darling Dr.
    Friendly.”
    Ida shoots me a look of resignation. “As if we could shut her up.”
    I think dismally to myself, it was Sophie’s “condition” that brought me to my current misery. But I can’t blame sweet Sophie; I can only blame myself for causing it to happen. If only I could have . . . I stop myself. Woulda coulda shoulda . . .
    Sophie has a real problem and my feeling sorry for myself won’t help her. I think about Sophie and her pills and wonder if Esther Ferguson took pills, too.
    Maybe too many? Or maybe Romeo fed her pills along with romance. But I can’t think now. My brain feels too fuzzy.
    “We were also sharing war stories. Of some of the terrible experiences people have had with 8 8 • R i t a L a k i n
    doctors and hospitals,” Mary informs me as she offers me a cookie. Mary used to be a nurse and she ought to know. “My poor cousin went to Mexico for a cure for her MS. I warned her not to go. They injected her with bee venom and charged her twenty thousand dollars. They almost killed her down there.”
    Tessie says, “I was telling them about my niece who went into the hospital for a knee replacement and they replaced the wrong one.”
    The women continue sewing while they talk.
    From what I can tell, they are already at the piec-ing process where they sew all their small cotton fabric patches together to create the pattern of the top half of the quilt.
    I should take part in this discussion, but I don’t want to. I let myself lean back against the wall and close my eyes and allow the pleasant hum of words to wash over me.
    “Well,” Chris Willems, from Phase One, comments, “I hear hospitals now write on the leg in ink saying ‘cut this one.’ ”
    “It’s about time,” adds Jean Davis from Phase Four.
    “I had a doctor tell me I had something called fi-bro myalgia. Which I didn’t have. And later on I found out he told all his patients the same thing.
    Maybe he owned stock in Celebrex.” This from Tessie.
    “Maybe he was just lazy,” comments Bella.
    “Well, things like that wouldn’t happen with my G e t t i n g O l d I s C r i m i n a l • 8 9
    GP, Dr. Friendly. In fact, I think he’s found a cure for Alzheimer’s.” Sophie announces this with great pride.
    Ida reaches over and pokes her. “Don’t talk stupid. No one has such a cure.”
    Sophie pokes Ida back, barely missing her with her embroidery scissors. “And how do you know he doesn’t?”
    Evvie glances over toward Irving, who’s sitting with Millie, listening to this. She whispers to Sophie. “Miss Insensitive, be quiet.”
    “What are we supposed to do? We’re old and helpless.” Ellie Fisher, in her nineties, from Phase Three, says this in a small, frightened voice. “Our lives are in their hands.” She puts down her sewing to dab at the tears in her weak eyes.
    “Yeah, those mamzers come down here to bleed us seniors dry,” Tessie adds.
    “Not all doctors are here to cheat us. There are some fine ones, too.” Mary is the voice of reason.
    “You have to learn how to protect yourself,”
    Ida comments.
    “I’ll drink to that.” With that, Tessie downs the rest of her bottle of Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray tonic.
    “How?” Ellie squints as she tries to thread her needle. “What about that couple I read about? His wife died because she accidentally took his pills and the dosage was too high for her. They were both taking the same pills for the same illness. It could happen to any of us. Our pills change so 9 0 • R i t a L a k i n
    often and the dosages change, too. Half the time I don’t know what I’m